Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-vfjqv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-27T03:04:11.995Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Saint Congar

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Abstract

Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1945

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

* With much regret, we mention the death of Canon Doble on 15 April.

62 Grosjean, op. cit. p. 119.

63 See above, p. 36, and ‘S. Decuman’, in my ‘Cornish Saints’ series, no. 28, p. 7.

64 ‘The Yew tree in the churchyard is locally known as St. Congar’s Walking stick’ (Rev. C. W. Heale, in Somerset County Gazette, 20 and 27 January 1922). Similar stories are told of S. Benign us of Glastonbury and of S. Indract. See my ‘S. Indract and S. Dominic’, p. 20.

65 Fr. Grosjean was the first to point this out—‘Adeo flagranter invehitur in reges : hunc excaecat, alterum opprimit, ilium liquefacit, minatur omnibus’ (op. cit. p. 119).

66 For Caradoc of Nantcarvan see an article by Prof. J. S. P. Tatlock in Speculum, April 1938. He was a contemporary of Geoffrey of Monmouth (d. 1155) who refers to him in the last chapter of the History of the Kings of Britain. For his Vita Gildae cf. F. Lot, Mélanges Bretonnes, pp. 267 f.

67 October 1921, pp. 15-17.

68 I have given examples in my Saint Iltut (Welsh Univ. Press Board, 1944, p. 29).

69 ib.

70 e.g. Vita Gundlei, c. 7, ‘ut coronemini, cum sitis coronandi, estote ergo coronati’. Vita Tathei, pp. 255 and 257, ‘fama famosissimi’ ; p. 256, primeve primordio, recepti recipi, balneare . . . balnearent . . . balnei ; p. 257 domuerat indomiti, audiret et audita retineret ; p. 258, defendere . . . defendat . . . defendenda ; p. 259, injuriam injuriosus, dampnarentur dampnabiles, ammbnitus ammonitione, habitationis habitantibus ; p. 260, ducentes ductam ; p. 262, auditis auditore ; p. 263, odorificus odorifere odorem.

71 The resemblances between the Vita Gundlei and the Vita Iltuti are very close indeed. In each we find the hand of a practised writer, indulging in long flights of rhetoric (the first chapters of the two Lives should be compared). Long speeches put into the mouths of angels are common to both Lives. Each has been divided into chapters by a reviser ; c. 4 in the Vita Gundlei begins in the middle of an angel’s speech and ends clumsily with the words ‘Inde dicebat’ :—what he said being contained in the hexameters with which c. 5 begins. Both introduce ‘Dubricius, Bishop of Llandaff’. It should be observed that a detail in Caradoc of Nantcarvan’s Vita Gildae (c. 9) seems suggested by the story of the Orkney pirates raiding the Severn coast in c. 12 of the Vita Gundlei.

Similarities between the Vita Tathei and the De S. Cungaro have been noted where they occur in the latter. The septem disciplinarum of the V.T. (p. 258) may be compared with similar statements in the Vita Iltuti, c. 1 and c. 7 ; while the story of the ‘canonicos horis constitutis visitantes oratorium’ on the same page of the V.T. is a repetition of a statement in c. 12 of the V. Iltuti. There are no chapter headings in the V.T. (Some of the chapter headings in the De S. Cungaro look suspiciously like some in the Vita Iltuti).

72 Caradoc uses in his Vita Gildae the name Aestiva Regio for Somerset. But Fr. Grosjean points out (op. cit. p. 104) that the Welsh still call Somerset Gwlad yr Haf, so this fact only shows that the author of W. was a Welshman. [A new Life of S. Cadoc, by Caradoc of Nantcarvan, has just been discovered, after my study of Saint Congar had been finished. The evidence it affords for the solution of the problem here discussed is so important that, to avoid confusion, I have dealt with it briefly in a final note].

72a The reviser has clumsily added a passage to c. 3, and the whole of c. 5. I have already (p. 37, note 31, and p. 38) called attention to the dislocations caused by these tinkerings.

73 Fr. Grosjean suggested (op. cit. p. 119) that the Chapter of Wells invited Caradoc to write a Life of S. Congar.

74 J.T.S., October 1921, p. 19.

75 See J. Loth’s article ‘Saint-Doccus’ in the Mém. de la. Soc. d’Hist. et d”Arch, de Bretagne, 1929. The very important part which this pan-Celtic saint must have played in the religious history of Wales is shown by the number of places bearing his name in Wales, Cornwall and Brittany and also by the references to him in early Irish documents. The Catalugus sanctorum Hiberniae, which dates from the 8th century, in the section dealing with saints who lived between 544 and 598, says that the Irish ‘received a mass from Bishop David and Gil[d]as and Docus, who were Britons’. The Annals of Ulster, however, insert ‘Quies Docci episcopi sancii Britonum abbatis’ on 1 January 473. It is a pity no Life of him was written. In Brittany he is the eponym of Saint-Tohou in Primelin near the Pointe du Raz, and of Saint-Doha in Merdrignac (C.-du-N.).

76 The monastery is called Docunni in the B.L.D. 21 times, Sancti Docunni 3 times, Docguinni 10 times, Dochou once (the pagination on p. 395 of the Index to the B.L.D., where these names occur, has got a little mixed).

77 Vita Samsonis, c. 45, monasterium quod Docco vocatur (6 MSS. read Doccovi, one Doccovus) : Landoho (Pipe Roll 1185, Patent Roll 1300, Plympton charter 1302) ; Landohou (Bishop Brantingham’s Register, 1383) ; in the first charter of Plympton Priory (early 12th century) Tohou ; Lan-hoho (Quivil’s Reg., 1283); Lannow since 1331. In 1400 (Stafford’s Reg.) the parish is called Sancti Doquinni.

78 Dr Robinson has here inserted, from H., the word quia, which is not in W. and entirely alters the meaning of the sentence.

79 Congar is from con-car=‘high friend’.

80 See Dr Robinson, J.T.S., January 1919, p. 105 ; Grosjean, op. cit. pp. 102-4.

81 Doccuin is, of course, a Celtic, not a Latin name. It is found on coins and inscriptions as Doca (York), Docca (Bâle), Doccae (Jublains), Doccius (London), Dixtuidoci Conbrinoci (Devon), Docirix (on numerous coins). See Holder, Altceltischer Sprachschatz, pp. 1296-9.

82 The entry is an early addition to the MS.

83 The story of the boar is probably not a Congresbury legend, but simply imitated from the Vita Cadoci. Similar stories are very common in Celtic Hagiography, cf. my Saint Dubricins (1944), p. 32.

84 This seems the simplest explanation. The authors of Lives of the British Saints (11, pp. 248, 9), relying on genealogies in late documents (including the worthless Iolo MSS.) call him Cyngar ab Geraint and make him the uncle of S. Constantine. Some have tried to make Constantinople in the De S. Congaro mean this Cornish king’s land, but it seems rather far-fetched. For Luciria Fr. Grosjean suggests a Welsh name like Goleuddydd, from goleudd= ‘light’, which may have been known to the writer (ib., op. cit. p. 113).

85 e.g. the Lives of SS. Budoc, Cadoc, Cybi, Petroc, David, Teilo, Patern and Tudual.

86 op. cit. p. 101, note 3.

87 See p. 87, note 71.

88 Mélanges Bret., 1907, p. 267.

89 Hist. Britt., § 71.

90 B.L.D., p. 78, ‘Quidam rex fuit Ercychi regionis, Pepiau nomine’, see Doble, S. Dubricius, 1944, pp. 12, 13, 25.

91 c. 37.

92 B.L.D, p. 116.

93 c. 17.

94 c. 7.

95 c. 5 and c. 10. In c. 5 S. Gwynllyw builds his monastery ‘concessione Dubricii, Landavensis episcopi’.

96 Lives of the British Saints, 11, 249.

97 The same is true of Devon. Asser mentions a place called Arx Cynuit, which the English Place-name Society (Devon, pp. 62, 3) identify with Countisbury in North Devon. There was an Alt Cynuit in Glamorgan (Vita Cadoci, c. 46) apparently the modern Llangynwyd.

98 Culbone, Lantokai and Kewstoke are exceptions. It is curious that in Cornwall S. Docco and S. Kigwa were both honoured in the same parish, now called St. Kew. S. Kywa is in the Exeter Martyrology on 8 February and on the same day in the Welsh kalendar in Vesp. A. XIV (as Kigwa).

99 Sanctus Conguarus 1387, Saint-Gongar 1422, Saint-Gongar 1668. The church has been rebuilt, but Rosenzweig (Rep. Arch. du Morbihan, 215) says that there is a low rounded lec’h in the churchyard wall, and a fine menhir near the Bois de Misny. Till the 12th century the parish formed part of that of Pleucadeuc. The statement in Lives of the British Saints, 11, 253, that at the Pardon ‘women get taken with a convulsive affection and bark like dogs’ is not quite correct. Women afflicted in this way come to the Pardon at the Chapel of N. D. de Quiempé (Keramper) in the parish on Whit Monday, hoping to be cured. (Le Mené, Paroisses du diocèse de Vannes 11, 364-8).

100 Lan-herne adjoins Mawgan Church, near Newquay in Cornwall. St.-Congard, Pleucadeuc and Pluherlin touch each other. For Pleucadeuc see Doble, S. Cadoc in Brittany, pp. 25-9. These churches must all have been founded from the very ancient abbey of Balon close by, connected with Dol (destroyed in the 9th century).

101 Nantes, 1897, pp. 146-51.

102 Lib. Land, p. 128.

103 Referred to in the Life of the Pembrokeshire S. Brynach (C.B.S. p. 9).

104 Mr R. Morton Nance says, ‘I quite agree with your identification of Landéda as “Lan of Tedda”; the vowel seems to have been lengthened, but that is not impossible. The base of the name is evidently Teth, which Loth would compare with Welsh taith, journey. If so, the vowel should be originally long, and the Cornish spelling Teath suggests teth.